


Waving (a few seconds earlier)

by thatonegreenpencil



Series: Connor has Feelings and Evan is oblivious [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Comfort, Developing Friendships, Fluff and Humor, Gen, References to Depression, References to Suicide, Social Anxiety, lunchables, soft Connor Murphy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 10:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11251467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatonegreenpencil/pseuds/thatonegreenpencil
Summary: This is Evan's life now. The kid who'd pushed him to the ground just this morning is now sharing a lunchables with him in the school's back parking lot.AKA: What might've happened if Evan had noticed Connor waving to him before they met in the computer lab. Featuring 'what-is-going-on' Evan Hansen that has Connor laughing more than he probably wanted to.(Inspired bythis acute observation on tumblr.)





	Waving (a few seconds earlier)

The conversation with Zoe Murphy plays on repeat all throughout first, second, third, and fourth period. There’s just so much to analyze in their…two minute? Conversation. Two minutes too long. Not that he’s  _ not _ thankful to have gotten to talk with Zoe Murphy. But Evan’s certain that he didn’t exactly improve on the impression he gave at the night of the jazz band concert. God, had he been fidgeting with his hands this morning? Because that meant that she’d think his hands were constantly sweaty because only people with sweaty hands rubbed at them all the time and this would be  _ the second time _ that she’d seen him with sweaty hands now, meaning that he’d probably been  _ associated _ with sweaty hands. She’ll see him and then immediately look at his hands to check if they were sweaty—which they probably  _ would _ be, now that he knows she’ll be  _ looking _ for it.

In short, Evan’s thankful that not a lot of teaching gets done the first day back. His teachers’ words are all static beneath the ever-running commentary in his head and he’s not sure he’s taken his meds today. So when the bell rings to signal lunch, he lingers in his seat so that people won’t fix their eyes on him and wonder why he’s more jittery than usual—but doesn’t linger for too long, because then they’d wonder why he was just sitting there when class had finished. The teacher might even come over to inspect him and label him the weird kid, so he’s sure to get up when around half the class streams out of the room. He doesn’t feel eyes on him because they’re all gazing towards the freedom that is the classroom exit. He feels a small bit of success for having avoided their judgment. Just his anxiety high-fiving him for giving into its whims. 

But the little mental pat on his shoulder—despite the source of it being the anxiety itself—helps, just a small amount. It helps just enough that he stops thinking about Zoe, derails that train of thought before pushing another onto the tracks the moment it’s gone. This one is about whether or not people notice that he’s not on his meds. Still not the best, but his eyes stop being fixated on the ground while he’s stuck in his own head—they dart, scanning for signs that people are  _ onto  _ him. Like at any moment, someone will be glaring at him accusingly, the same way his mom does when he neglects his meds.

He pauses mid-step when he  _ does _ catch someone looking towards him in the hustle and bustle of hallway traffic. Connor Murphy and his pale, lanky self is like a lighthouse among the animated movement around him. And fittingly, the sea of people part around him and he just stands there, staring at Evan. 

Not just staring, Evan realizes, but waving. Small, hesitant, almost reluctant, but there’s a definite back-and-forth motion of the hand that’s not shoved in his pocket. It’s actually  _ Evan _ who’s staring for a prolonged period of time that’s definitely extended outside of socially acceptable norms. But before he can weigh the pros and cons of waving back to Connor Murphy, his body just  _ reacts _ . It tends to do that sometimes to screw up his momentous, once in a lifetime social opportunities. There’s a reason Evan doesn’t let loose and go with his instincts in conversation, there’s a reason he  _ thinks _ .

There is not an ounce of thought involved in his decision to wave back to Connor Murphy. He just  _ does.  _ He might be smiling a bit too, although he does not seem to be in control of his voluntary muscles right now so what does he know. 

Although Evan keeps walking with the flow of the crowd, mostly to avoid getting trampled, he sees Connor cut through the current of traffic to… to walk next to him. 

“So,” Connor begins. “Um, what happened to your arm?”

And, well, this is apparently a conversation they are having. The intersection that branches off to the cafeteria is at the end of the hallway, and it seems miles away from where Evan’s standing. “Um, well, I f-fell out of a tree.”

“Well that’s just the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Connor says, not missing a beat. Then he laughs—if you can call it a laugh, all that happens is the corners of his mouth twist up and he releases a sharp breath—and Evan finds himself breathing out a laugh himself. Because Connor’s stated the cold facts: it is the saddest fucking thing.

“I know,” Evan says between hesitant laughter.

It’s different somehow, when Connor says it. Different from Jared saying it and laughing with his full chest and his full mouth. Connor with his breathy little laugh doesn’t point fingers, it just… accepts. Which is more than Evan’s gotten from any of his peers today, his mother, or even himself. 

This doesn’t change the fact that Connor shoved him this morning and called him a fucking freak and is now calling him the ‘saddest fucking thing.’ Which is a significant downgrade. Pity from Connor Murphy. Except again, it doesn’t exactly feel like pity because there’s just something in Connor’s thin smile that says that they’re drowning in this together, this pity, this situation. Something in the way he hunches over and into himself and clutches at the strap of his messenger bag.

“So, uh, I see that no one’s signed your cast.” Connor points to the bare linen wrappings that Evan had promised his mother he would fill with names.

“Yeah, I-I know.”

“Well, I’ll sign it.”

Connor’s words almost make Evan freeze in the middle of the hall. He just stumbles for a moment, out of shock. “W-wh, did I—”

“Here.” Connor swerves to the right and Evan trails behind him. Dazed. Confused. Once they’re close to the rows of lockers and out of the stampede’s way, the taller boy asks, “Do you have a sharpie?”

Evan starts. “U-um yeah, just, here—” He digs out a sharpie with his hands that are definitely sweaty and almost doesn’t hand it to Connor. Because his hands are sweaty, and the sweat would coat the body of the sharpie. But that means that there’s no way for Connor to sign his cast and the thought of going home with a barren arm terrifies him for reasons he doesn’t want to admit.

He hands the sharpie to Connor, taking extra care to only touch the tip of the black cap as he passes it over. That action alone is a little conspicuous, too. Now that makes two Murphys that think his hands are sweaty, although he’s not exactly sure when he started caring about Connor Murphy as much as he did Zoe. Maybe it’s just natural, considering they’re so close to one another. Connor’s head is bent over his left arm as he scribbles away, and Evan’s pretty sure that if he were to bend forward a little, strands of Connor’s hair would brush past his nose. He wonders if Connor can feel the slight trembling of his arm under the cast and thinks anything of it.

“Y-you don’t have to—” Evan begins, but Connor’s already stepping back to admire his work.

Evan admires it too, but perhaps with not as much gusto as he’d imagined he’d have when a classmate finally signed his cast. He’s still too overwhelmed to process the whole situation fully. “Thanks,” he blurts out, casting a nervous glance at Connor and hoping his lack of enthusiasm isn’t coming off the wrong way. “Y, you didn’t have—you—yeah.”

“Want to get lunch?”

Again, another  _ completely out of left field _ statement from Connor Murphy who is becoming more of an enigma by the second. This is whiplash to the point where Evan’s beginning to think this whole thing is staged, somehow. He’d suspect Jared if Jared wasn’t constantly mocking Connor. He searches Connor’s face, but it’s unreadable—or there’s just nothing to read.

Most importantly, he’s never been invited to lunch before. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to  _ say _ . To  _ do. _ He could chew too loudly or too messily and make Connor think he’s a pig. Evan tends to skip lunch and go to the computer lab or the library to avoid judgmental eyes watching him eat food. To have a set of those eyes sitting in front of him?

“Yeahsure.”

Goddammit, brain.

Evan makes to head towards the cafeteria and then stops when Connor isn’t doing the same, and instead giving him a puzzled look. “Aren’t you—? Sorry when you said lunch I thought you meant you wanted to eat  _ with _ me, I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that you must think I’m so weird of  _ course _ you meant something totally different sorry.”

“Dude, chill,” Connor says with that same breathy-laugh in his voice. “That is what I meant, i just don’t want to have to deal with the fucking disgusting plastic garbage they disguise as food.” 

Connor turns on his heels and begins to walk away from the direction of the cafeteria. 

“D-did you bring your own lunch?” Evan asks.

“Nope.”

“Then, uh, how—what are we—um, you, going to eat?” 

Evan feels as if he is missing something glaringly obvious here, a feeling that multiplies with each second Connor doesn’t reply. 

“I just want to get the fuck out of here, don’t you?”

He’s been feeling that way for months now, but Evan doesn’t say that. He follows Connor silently out the school doors to the parking lot, where the school boundary is marked by a grassy field surrounded by a chain-link fence. 

“There’s a burger place on the other side of the fence.” Connor points to a white brick building a few yards away, easily reachable if they were to climb the fence. Which is what Connor is blatantly suggesting they do.

“W-we might get hurt trying to go over the fence. There’s, um, a lot of risk involved with climbing something like this and I don’t want to be weighing you down, sorry, but I can’t really, um, climb stuff with this cast on? And we might get in trouble too, we’re not really, uh, supposed to go outside the school.”

“They don’t give a fuck.” Connor snorts and throws up his hands. “Well then, what now genius? Like I said before, I don’t have a lunch so what do you want to do, just starve? I’m already having a miserable day and now I’m not going to eat. Perfect.”

“Well, um,  _ I _ brought a lunch.” Evan pulls out a slightly squished but neat brown paper bag from his school bag. “Maybe, if you don’t mind I know some people might think this isn’t the most sanitary—maybe we could share?” A part of him doesn’t think it’s really fair, how Connor is blaming him for not being able to get food. Evan didn’t make him offer to get lunch with him. Evan didn’t know they were going to have to climb a fence to get lunch. Evan isn’t stopping Connor from climbing the fence and getting lunch by himself.

He’s glad that Connor hasn’t even thought of doing that last one. Being abandoned seems lonelier than having never been found in the first place. Perhaps Connor was lonely too—lonely enough to ask Evan to get lunch with him, lonely enough to sacrifice food to avoid leaving him behind.

It’s a nice thought.

What’s even nicer, though, is the pure astonishment flashing across Connor’s face. “You brought lunch? What was the whole cafeteria thing about?”

“I-I thought that you didn’t have lunch and, not to make assumptions, but go to the cafeteria to—to get food.” Evan hesitates. “I wouldn’t eat, um, the ‘fucking disgusting plastic garbage’ either.”

That gets an actual laugh out of Connor—a short bark of joy that cuts through to Evan’s core like lightning. “Well said. So you actually listened.”

They perch themselves on those small yellow pillars that jut out of the ground in parking lots; Evan never learned the name for them. They don’t make the best chairs but Connor makes surprisingly good company. Evan’s probably saying that because he only other company he can compare this experience to is his time spent with Jared. And most of that is composed of insults directed at him  _ by _ Jared. He talks about Evan’s inability to do anything in life and about his camp friends.

Connor talks about...lunch. “Give me anything as long as it isn’t stupid organic shit. My mom got into that for a while and it tastes almost as bad as the school lunch.” 

“I-It’s not, it’s, um, lunchables.” Evan can feel his face growing red as he takes out the small plastic tray. It’s the cheese, crackers, and ham variety.

Connor apparently finds this hilarious as he promptly doubles over with silent laughter. “You’re um, what, five foot ten? About? Senior in high school? And you’re eating lunchables?”

For an insane, out-of-body-experience moment where he is free from plaguing anxiety—Evan seriously considers throwing a cracker at Connor Murphy’s head. But he doesn’t because his anxiety comes right back around and tells him that Connor will hate him forever if he does that and they’ll lose… whatever sharing lunchables in the school’s back parking lot is. “They’re, um, cheap. And good. And easy to pack. The, uh, organic shit you were talking about doesn’t sound that bad? Like my family’s kinda poor a bit so we don’t get, um, that much of a chance to get healthy stuff and it is all artificial you know? I worked as a park ranger this summer and I really—it’s just different, the real and the fake.”

“Sure is.” Connor reaches over and plucks a cracker from the tray, and then sandwiches it with a piece of cheese before popping it into his mouth. “I can really taste all the fake,” he says with mirth. Evan finds himself giggling along, just a little.

They sit for a while, enjoying the crackers and—for the first time in a while for Evan—life, the state of equilibrium and harmony they find themselves in. Things in his mind are serene, which isn’t something that happens often. He’s still worrying about whether or not he looks like a pig while he eats or if he’s spraying crumbs or if he’s chewing too loud—but all that’s background noise in comparison to Connor’s quiet but heated case against ‘organic shit’ that he’s clearly spent a lot of time thinking about. Connor is surprisingly articulate, which automatically makes him everything Evan isn’t. But the fact they’re sitting here together with nowhere else better to be and no one else better to be with—that makes them the same. 

“Shit,” Connor says as the sound of the bell goes off inside the school. “I didn’t even ask. You’re Evan Hansen, right? I’m such a fucking asshole, digging into your food without even bothering to ask.” 

“It’s—yeah, Evan Hansen, don’t worry about it. This was…fun? Thanks for having me, I hope you had fun too, it’s fine if you didn’t I mean, I might just be exaggerating things and it wasn’t even fun at all—”

“No,” Connor interrupts. “It was fun, yeah. Thanks for the lunchables.”

They both grin, quick and small and bright. It might be the first time in years that Evan’s shared a grin with anyone.

Evan takes a few steps towards the school, then gestures. “You’re, um, not going in..?”

Connor fiddles with his pockets. “Going to stay out here as long as I can until the teachers come after me. So that’s a no. I just want to take in the view for a bit.”

There’s not much of a view to see, but the faraway look in Connor’s eyes prevents Evan from questioning it. 

“Okay, then, um, enjoy.”

Evan opens the door halfway before looking back. “Connor?”

The lanky teen twists his head at his name. Evan ducks down, but doesn’t drop his gaze. “Um, I’ll see you later? Maybe?”  _ ‘Definitely?’  _ Evan hopes.

Connor stares at him for what seems like an eternity. “Yeah. Make that after school. I need to take you to that burger place.”

Something soars in Evan’s heart and his joy is as thick as the letters scrawled onto his cast. He turns to go back into the school, but not before giving Connor a departing wave.

Connor waves back.

**Author's Note:**

> Picture this: Evan put the lunchables tray into another paper bag when he could've just packed the tray by itself. He didn't want to be the only one to be out of place so he hid the lunchables. He probably even reuses the same brown paper bag to Save the Trees.
> 
> The lunchables headcanon is so important to me. And so is everyone else in the musical. Just protect them all.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this thing I popped out when I was overloaded with Connor and Evan feels! Might do a series continuation of this if the inspiration strikes me, but for now: thank you for reading. Kudos and comments are always appreciated (especially if you wanna talk more cute and irrelevant headcanons with me)


End file.
